


Over and over

by seaofolives



Series: Songs for Brothers [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Era, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Song Lyrics, Songfic, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:08:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: We fight the same fights (On and on)We shed the same blood (On and on)Go down the same roadsOver and over againHow many lifetimes (On and on)How many bloodlines (On and on)Until we realize we could all be lovers and friends





	Over and over

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Jim James' _Over and over_ and written as a kind of continuation to _[New York](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953204)_. I didn’t want to officially attach this fic to that one bc that was meant to stand alone on its own but to those who want a happier resolution...like me...

For as long as he could remember, since he'd had to move his people to Earth, he had always been looking out to the world. 

From behind a window, in a pub at the feet of skyscrapers, where he looked up. Or from a quiet tower, gazing down to a sea of black and of golden stars, red comets streaking up and down, this ways and that all along its unseen veins—their little cosmos within their universe. And every time he looked, he was constantly struck by how small—yet vast—this realm was. He remembered feeling the same way when he was younger, after he’d been cruising the space ways for give or take a quarter of a millennium. The cosmos seemed so vast and limitless at first, but suddenly seemed no bigger than the palms of his hands, broad as they may be, as soon as he had learned his directions and shortcuts. How ironic, he thought, then, how a tiny, miniscule blue marble could seem so vast, while the great, ancient cosmos, which held them all in its fabric, could be so small. 

While the great, ancient cosmos…could be so small… 

“You know, Thor, Tony’s waiting for my report on his desk first thing tomorrow morning.”

Thor turned away from his view of the Earth—New York, really—to face the younger blond refilling glasses on the stout coffee table, by now weighed down with a notable collection of empty bottles. He looked up to the Thunderer, blue eyes to blue eyes, and offered a friendly smile that also seemed so shy despite all the battles they’d fought together. Was it any wonder, then, that even the immortal God of Thunder could be so honored to have as a friend, this human whose only motivation to fight was his unshakable sense of morality? To protect the unprotected, to defend what was right no matter his allies and his enemies. It was a brand of greatness he thought he’d only seen among his kin or their many, many tales. 

And yet here he was, face to face with one such who, despite his popularity and power, only always did his best. Thor smiled slightly and finally ambled back to his company. “Are you playing the psychologist now, Steve Rogers? Or whatever it is you humans call your mind healers.”

“Therapist,” Steve supplied, sliding Thor his glass as the god settled his weight on the modern-looking couch next to his. It should also be noted that among the Avengers, he was the only one who could truly come to match Thor’s appetite for drinks of the alcoholic nature. He didn’t drink as often as Tony Stark did (although the man had insisted he was cutting down for the baby which Thor always thought was a shame), but he certainly lasted longer than the inventor so any opportunity to drink with this soldier was one the god always considered a special occasion. “And no, I think I’m too messed up to be considered for the profession.”

“You would think a man who’s had one-hundred years of existence could be more certain of himself,” Thor echoed his sentiment, reaching over to Steve with his glass. 

“I can’t imagine being a thousand-years old,” Steve responded in kind, tapping glasses with his friend. 

Thor’s lips quirked up to a heavy smile. 

They raised their drinks in a silent toast to their own aged histories, the tiny music player between them croning softly with Steve’s playlist, and knocked them back in one gulp. 

“Honestly, how do you even deal with it?” Steve went on after a moment, a rhetorical question, having refilled both their glasses, this time holding on to his own. Thor swirled his with the chunk of rock ice idly. “One-thousand years, that’s equivalent to what? A whole encyclopedia set worth of memories? Maybe two?” Thor gave a low laugh while Steve shook his head and downed his glass, anyway. “And you were awake for all of them.”

“Most of them,” Thor corrected. 

“Still beats me,” Steve persisted, reaching out his glass as Thor refilled it from the bottle. “I’ve been asleep for most of mine but I’m already reeling. Even though there are some parts of the present that are still familiar with my time…but I can’t say that’s a good thing. I mean after seventy years, you’d think everyone would have learned enough to stop fighting over their differences.”

Thor smiled again. “Perhaps it is that that makes one-thousand years more bearable than we realize. Not everything is new, and some parts are bound to repeat themselves.” He lifted his glass to his lips, pausing. “Actually, I don’t remember all of them,” he confessed, almost shyly, before he drank his glass. 

“Really?” Steve asked. 

Thor chucked slightly. “Really,” he confirmed. “Even for a god, one-thousand years is…too much.” He reached to set his glass down on the table before he leaned back comfortably in his seat. “And I mean that in every sense of the word. Of my younger centuries, I still remember the most glorious of battles and the bitterest heartbreaks. I still remember my first kiss, the first time I bedded someone in the heat of passion. The first time I made my father laugh with pride, the look on my mother’s face when I finally lifted Mjolnir. Others have started to blend together. Sometimes, I think my favorite tavern during the time of Magnus the Good was in Iceland but sometimes, I also think it’s in Norway…and I don’t remember the first time I tasted their mead. Whether it was after the battle in Egypt or against the celts in Ireland. I only know that I celebrated both victories until it felt like I could no longer remember my knees or a time when I had trousers on.” Steve let out a laugh, for which Thor smiled. 

“But there are others still,” Thor went on, looking to his hands, “that I remember clearly…as though they were not hundreds, and tens of thousands of years ago. And some that are so fresh, they only feel like yesterday…” He looked back out to the black world, illuminated only by the sliver of a moon and whichever window had its lights still on, searching its vastness for the cosmos and the corners of it, as though it were a man hiding in the darkness, and watching. Ever watching. “But that does not make them any easier to live with.”

Neither was the silence that followed, like a dreaded spouse that damned him for the actions he wanted terribly to escape, but couldn’t. Like a husband, his head stayed bowed, and his shame rode like a cruel goblin aboard his shoulders. Knowing and accusing; he knew what he did but played deaf to it, or tried to. He couldn’t admit to his deed. He hadn’t the face to try. 

“You know,” Steve’s voice reached through to him from the vacuum. He looked up, watching the captain set his own glass down next to his, “you never really know how much the world’s screwed you over…until you find yourself facing against your best friend.” The younger man leaned back. “Last I saw him, he was fighting my war next to me, falling because of it. I wake up and next thing I know, he’s brainwashed by the nazis. Fighting their war.”

“How did you fight him?” Thor asked. 

“I didn’t,” Steve said, shaking his head, looking up to the Thunderer. “I fought for him.” It drew his eyes back to the glass wall overlooking the classy lounge at the first floor, where everyone else was, nursing their own glasses and bottles, standing or sitting around in small clusters. Most everyone at least—their generous host was still nowhere to be found, having volunteered to take their youngest member home, less because Parker was young and more because Stark didn’t trust him to go straight home and finish his schoolwork like he promised. Or so Thor understood. The sorcerer Strange himself was absent—although he was really only employed as a consultant, is what they called it. 

It was the after-party Tony had mentioned at the end of a hard day’s work, although one that seemed ready to collapse any second now. Everyone was just drinking until they could no longer bother to keep their eyes open and their beverages aloft, metal arm or otherwise. “Bucky and I go way back,” Steve went on, speaking of his friend lounging in one of the couches, looking tired, smiling quietly. Resembling an old man despite his physicality and luxurious black hair. Thor could not remember a time when he did not look tired. “He was always looking out for me, even after Mom died. Even after we enlisted in the army and I got,” Steve pulled his fists in, flexing his muscles, “big and strong.” Thor laughed at his humor. “Before Captain America came along, I didn’t have much,” he went on after a pause. “But even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

It was…a sweet sentiment. That even Asgard’s champion wished he could say for himself. He and Steve had always been more similar than their age, their looks and their capacity for drinks. They were both sentimental, too, for things that were and could have been. The only difference was that Steve had regained a piece of it and he… 

He felt as if he was still watching his brother fall—down the void, on the ground, his eyes unseeing and…his life… 

“You think it wrong that I denied him?” Thor snarled. He hadn’t meant to, but it was suddenly very difficult to speak. 

“You know I can’t tell you what to think,” Steve reminded him levelly. 

Thor knew that, of course. His sudden silence spoke as much. Steve had never been the kind to impose, and there had been no reason for him to jump to his own defensive. Or so he liked to think…well, maybe there was but he had no right… 

Not after what he’d done to a man who only wanted to come home. He could have easily accepted him again, as he always had, and yet here he was, rejecting him—not out of scorn but having been disappointed, and betrayed and left for too many times… 

And yet, was that wise? If it was, why could he then not face up to it? 

“Perhaps more’s the pity,” Thor said, now more gently. “When I came out there to meet him, I was…everything he’d always known me for—thunder and rage and nothing but. I left no room to listen to his words.” He rose and wandered again to the window, where perhaps he may find him again, finally, somewhere in the dark city. “I didn’t want to,” he confessed. “The man is a powerful sorcerer but even his magic is outmatched by his words. And I am so tired of his lies,” he sighed, shoulders falling with his face. “You’d think they’d only be words that you hear but I never just do. I listen. You’d think a man who’s lived for a thousand years would be wiser by now but…well, he always called me an oaf.” He smiled slightly. “A rare truth to ever come out of his mouth.”

“I can see why,” Steve echoed. Over the soft music, he could hear the sound of a drink being poured. “A guy like him…must be the easiest thing to let go.”

“No, you do not know that truth of him, Steve,” Thor chuckled, now smiling brighter at his reflection, painted on blackness. “He only _wishes_ he could let go. I used to think he could, that sentiments are no better than a fly on his shoulder for him but now I know better.” He looked down to his hands. “And yet…still I rejected him. Just when I think he might be ready to come back for good.

“I tried my hand in lying,” he started back to his friend who was setting the nearly-empty bottle down near the two filled glasses, “but there’s a reason they don’t call me the Prince of Lies. You would know it as much as I do.” He reached for the proffered drink. “Worthiness comes with a price…” He started to lift his glass to his lips, only to stop when he found himself far less interested to taste the heat of the alcohol than he is to look upon it as though it were Mimir’s well, brimming with knowledge amidst its singular chunk of ice. “But I don’t want it to be my brother,” came the heavy sigh of admission. “I lost my hammer…I lost my mother and my father. I lost my brother once, twice, thrice, and each time is more painful than the last. But still I don’t know which is more painful—to lose him again or to face his absence, again.” Finally, he raised his glass, “As I do now,” and knocked the well in one motion. 

The empty thing landed on their shared table harder than he’d meant, but his weight and his troubles were suddenly too much for his balance. He fell to his seat with a giant’s exhalation, his breath fading out to the quiet strums of an airy guitar, until that, and his regret was all that filled the darkened room and the space between them. 

“ _Over again,_ ” sang the thin voice from the music soon after, like some unwanted conscience. “ _Over and over and over again._ ”

A poor choice of song, it seemed, for Thor’s present tormented state but he supposed he could accept this punishment. He chuckled for what it was worth, smiling wanly. 

“ _We fight the same fights,_ ” it went on. “ _We shed the same blood. Go down the same roads. Over and over again._

 _How many lifetimes?_ ” it asked him, as he turned to the hapless little thing, a timid black device echoing his mind. “ _How many bloodlines? Until we realize we could all be lovers and friends._ ”

“Guess you know what to do now,” Steve said after his length of silence, watching Thor carefully from his side. 

“But I don’t know where to start,” Thor sighed, the pain of the burden etched clearly on his features which he cast to his friend, looking on with concern. “I don’t know where…I don’t know how I’ll find him…”

“I’m pretty sure he’ll come up soon enough.”

“He’ll take the last laugh.”

“I guess that’s up to you, then,” his advisor went on. “If you wanna hear it or not.”

Would he be a fool and pretend deafness again, then? He’d already tried once, twice and proven again and again that he would rather the cosmos see him as stupid as long as he would be allowed to save it. He sighed again, leaning forward to rest his forehead on his laced fists, a man full of regrets, praying for guidance. Steve’s hand fell on his shoulder with a steady grip. He was a good friend. 

And now Thor must prove himself worthy of his friendship.


End file.
